Burger King is owned by private equity groups Texas Pacific, Bain Capital and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, who bought the company from the UK drinks group Diageo in December 2002 for $1.5bn.

Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, the private equity arm of the bank, paid more fees to investment banks for private equity deals than any other buy-out firm in the first quarter of his year. It paid $130m in fees to banking advisers on deals and only a quarter of the fees generated by its buy-out unit went to Goldman Sachs.

Burger King is using all the proceeds to pay back debt. None of the capital raised will be reinvested into the business.